The deepest cuts of my writing often emerge in the latest hours of the night. When they do, the inspiration slowly fades as dawn approaches. If this phase of inspired prose is left to wane without expression, it’s lost forever. So, to force rest when there is none seemingly to be had is pointless, especially when images which defy explanation keep flashing before my eyes.

Many of these deep cuts are inevitably locked away in the myriad pages of my journal entries, often left to remain hidden from the world for years to come. Some of them contain great secrets, while others don’t make sense just yet and perhaps never will. These deep cuts are where I lock away my most difficult memories and thoughts. I write about them just in the hopes they will leave me alone. Sometimes, the act of simply chronicling them helps my state of mind. Sometimes it just allows me to get sleep from the sheer exhaustion of relating such weighty remembrances.

After writing these deep cuts, I’m often rewarded by strange dreams full of bizarre twists and turns. I find myself wandering through labyrinths based on places I once roamed mixed with strange renderings of entirely imaginary settings. It’s reminiscent of a first-person shooter game with nonsensical level design. Rather than ascending the floors of massive castles or descending deeper into great winding dungeons or labyrinths, it’s as if portals open and close at will into new areas, each entirely unrelated to the last.

In these dreams, my self-image is often distorted whenever I come across a reflective surface, and changes when I shift about, trying to see the subtle changes from different angles. At times, things seem much more compressed. But, at other times, they’re stretched out, as if dimensions seem to be at odds with one another, just to keep my senses off balance. 

The levels are more numerous than in any game I’ve ever played. There are dozens of concurrent stories to explore, each with new obstacles and foes at every turn. Over the course of decades, these dreams start to take on lives of their own, sometimes even becoming reflected in the fiction I’ll occasionally write. Sometimes I awake from these bizarre adventures in a cold sweat or with a panic attack, keeping me up at night for hours at a time. But if I write things down that are bothering me at the time, related to my nightmares or not, I do finally find my way back to a semi-restful state once again.

Upon waking, I almost never enjoy a true sense of calm or contentment that feels like it’s going to stay beyond a fleeting moment. I wish that some day these nightmares will calm down and become more palatable, perhaps even to the point of entertaining. Perhaps simply trying to wish away these nightmares is unproductive. My mind has a lot to process, so without these overdramatized dream-states, I may instead awake with significantly less sanity each day.

At least now when I wake from these nightmares in a crazed state, I quickly realize that I’m safe. It certainly helps that I’ve finally found a place to forever call home. For much of my adult life, the idea of home seemed to be a mirage more often than not. But now, living on a vast property by the woods, I can go out on the back porch, look outside, and ground myself again.

Whenever I’ve had a bad night, it helps for me to hear the river run, because I know there are many little breaths who depend on the lifeblood it brings. As soon as I collect my wits, I typically set myself to writing down whatever comes to mind right away. I often catch my juiciest morsels as my mind is still awakening from my often tumultuous slumber.

While I certainly could keep most of it to myself, over time I came to realize that it made more sense to share at least a few of my more cogent cuts with the world. Perhaps my words can bring a few drops of inspiration to some thirsty tongues to quench their thirst for curiosity.But, this for me is both wonderful and disheartening, as I know too many more souls remain dry and wanting for something fresh.

So, while my dreams in the night may often be beyond my control, my waking dream is to quench the thirst of all the souls that I can. It’s quite possible that the deepest cuts of my writing will remain locked away until after my passing. Perhaps this is for the best, but that doesn’t make them any less meaningful. After all, without digging through the pain and unlocking certain doors, who knows what wonders I may miss out on sharing?

~ Amelia Desertsong